


the storm before the calm

by magnificentbastards



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, mild spoilers for episode 25, mysterious sinister and inexplicable events, the surreal and the beautiful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-17 14:10:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/868471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnificentbastards/pseuds/magnificentbastards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'This is a story about you.</p><p>And since, as a journalist and broadcaster of integrity, I strive always to tell the truth, I must disclose to you, dear listeners – dear listen<i>er</i> – <i>dearest Carlos</i> – that it is also a story about me.</p><p>This is a story about us.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	the storm before the calm

**Author's Note:**

> you can find podfic of this story [here](http://byzantienne.tumblr.com/post/54550788258/welcome-to-night-vale-has-in-an-inexorable-manner), courtesy of the exceedingly talented Linden and her completely perfect Cecil voice, and I 100% recommend you listen to that while (or indeed instead of) reading this, because it's amazing.

This is a story about you.

And since, as a journalist and broadcaster of integrity, I strive always to tell the truth, I must disclose to you, dear listeners – dear listen _er_ – _dearest Carlos_ – that it is also a story about me.

This is a story about us.

The story begins about a year ago, although if one were to look at it through a slightly different lens it could be said to begin several decades ago – or it _could_ be said to have nothing even resembling a beginning at all. For our particular purposes, however, we enter the story this evening. You are in your laboratory on the fourth floor of the red-brick building near (but not officially affiliated with) Night Vale Community College, gazing out of the window and listening to the voice that seems to speak directly into your perfect ears, as though you were the only human left on the remains of a charred and smoking Earth, from the radio on the counter.

And so you gaze, through two panes of reinforced glass on which the greenish stains and claw-marks of last week’s Coca-Cola experiment are just now beginning to fade, out onto a balmy Night Vale summer’s evening.

The great formless void of the sky is a deep purple-black, scattered with far-away stars like the inexplicable but sinister pinpricks in the flesh of an unidentified corpse; the neon lights of Big Rico’s Pizza glow beside the gently vibrating patch of ground that, at times, contains the Post Office; over to the west, you can see the crumbling remains of what never actually was the Night Vale Harbor and Waterfront Recreation Area, and behind it the darkened expanse of the sand wastes, hanging like a shimmering mirage on the horizon.

If you turn your head a little to the left, you can see the vague form of the Arby’s, and its sign glowing indistinctly in red and yellow. The mysterious lights hang over it, flickering gently in and out of existence, passing back and forth in the sky hundreds of feet above the far-away semi-illuminated parking lot. Maybe -- I wouldn’t want to presume, of course -- maybe you’re thinking about the last night you were there, sitting on the trunk of your car, looking up. Where your hand was. Whose head rested on your shoulder.

The mysterious lights have _probably_ been there for hundreds of years; they could date back to the original settlement of Night Vale by that historic group of singularly unambitious imperialist jerks, or even to the unrecorded years of who-knows-what before that moment! Or they could date forward, to right now, as you see them, as you conceive of them, brought into existence by the very fact of your own miraculous consciousness. It’s impossible to tell. And, indeed, no one should try to do so. No one should attempt to tell the history of the mysterious lights above the Arby’s. _No one_.

You sit by the window, then, watching the lights move, mysteriously, in the sky. You think that they look almost as though someone turned a dimmer switch down on a firework show, and then filmed it in slow-motion. You think a lot of things. You feel fear – more than the usual amount of fear – and are sure there is a reason for it; but what that reason could be, you cannot quite recall.

You pick up your cell-phone and thumb a number into the keypad.

On the radio, muffled by distance and layers of authoritarian surveillance and whatever lurks, ancient and waiting, in the airwaves, a dial tone sounds.

 

\--

 

“Hello?”

“Hey, Cecil --”

“ _Carlos_! Good evening, Carlos.”

“Good evening -- wait, sorry, aren’t you doing a show right now? We’re not on air, are we?”

“It’s _so_ good to hear from you, Carlos; in fact, I was just thinking about you! There I was, sitting in my chair, looking out across our little town – Night Vale is so beautiful at night, don’t you think, even the bits of it that are constantly humming quietly, or the bits we cannot look directly at, for fear of our retinas imploding – and I thought: I wonder if Carlos is looking at the same sky as I am? Not quite _literally_ the same sky, of course, bearing in mind the mysterious atmosphere-shattering pan-dimensional faultline that runs diagonally across Route 800, but, you know, _metaphorically_ speaking.”

“Oh. Oh, well, I _was_ looking at the sky, actually. More specifically, I was looking at the lights above the Arby’s. I thought you might already have known that, for some reason, though it’s hardly a founded assumption to make…”

“Oh, I had an inkling! They certainly draw the eye, those mysterious lights. At least, they’d been drawing mine.”

“Cecil, there was a reason I called you. I mean, a reason aside from the fact that I wanted to talk to you. I think there might be something wrong with my laboratory.”

“Something wrong?”

“Yes. It’s an effort to remember – which I think is a problem in and of itself – but I believe I was examining the fruit from that orange tree, the one I found growing out of the linoleum in the leisure center yesterday. I had just put the fragments of teeth beneath the microscope, when I was gripped by this sudden sense of overwhelming fear, and a reason aside from the fact that I wanted to talk to you. I think there might be something wrong with my laboratory.”

“Something wrong?”

“Yes. It’s an effort to remember – which I think is a problem in and of itself – but I believe I was gripped by this sudden sense of overwhelming fear, and – ”

“Something – ”

[ _static_ ]

“Carlos?”

[ _static continues_ ]

[ _static continues_ ]

 

\--

 

And throughout her life she had diligently taken the road less traveled – but now there were no roads, traveled or otherwise, at all. The scrublands and sand wastes stretched out before her in every direction, impossible to navigate by map or by star or by instinct, the landscape stained a weird, unearthly purple under the lights of an alien sun. Roads – like the concept of Wednesday, or the color aquamarine – had been outlawed permanently, scorched from existence like the secret scientific facility where the last of the experiments had taken place. No one had heard the screams. There would be no more travel. There would be no more movement. There will be no more movement. Stationary. Static. Still.

This has been traffic.

And now, back to you.

You twist the lower adjustment screw of the microscope between the tips of your fingers and peer down the viewfinder. You are intent upon your work. Beneath your gaze, the tooth fragments you extracted previously sit uncharacteristically still. You will have to run tests to discover what species they originally belonged to, or if they are indeed teeth at all. The solitary tongue lies in its glass dish on the desk at your side, and the fact that it does not move feels, to you, more than a little sinister.

Behind you, something rustles. You are alone in the lab. The radio speaks to you.

The radio tells you it would be inadvisable for you to turn around.

And you listen, because you – dear, dearest, _perfect_ Carlos – you think you trust the voice that emanates from the radio, and the man behind the voice. You forget why you are afraid; although you cannot quite forget, or shake off, the feeling of fear. You look out the window. Far away, the lights shimmer above the Arby’s.

You do not understand the lights as you did that night – as _we_ did, that night, when the myriad miniature wounds beneath your blood-stained shirt had so recently mended themselves under the healing ululations of Teddy Williams, and my heart seemed to soar so high it could have looked _down_ upon those mysterious lights. But you can conceive of the fact that, sometime in the mist-wreathed and unmapped land of your future, you will understand them again. You think this is how understanding works: it comes and goes, like the hooded figures come and go outside the towering obsidian walls of the Dog Park, like your ability to conceive of the Dog Park at all comes and goes, depending on the phase of the moon, and the political climate of Night Vale.

Your ability to conceive of the Dog Park has been revoked, and you should cease exercising said mental faculty immediately.

Carlos? says the radio. Carlos, can you hear me?

Behind you, something rustles.

 

\--

 

“Say, Carlos?”

“Yes?”

“I was wondering – what are your favourite municipally approved dining establishments in Night Vale? Not that I have any ulterior motives behind asking, or anything. I was just a little curious.”

“Huh… I don’t dine out much, I suppose. Rico’s delivers to my lab automatically once a week, of course, but apart from that I tend to make my own food.”

“Oh, Carlos, you sure are missing out! There are _so many_ great places to eat in Night Vale! The Moonlight All-Night Diner makes the most delicious pecan pie to share, and if you go in the evening the neon looks so _beautiful_ against the night sky – and when Jerry’s Tacos is allowed to remain open by the City Council, their Unspecified Red-Colored Meat Quesadillas sure are good – oh, and it’s a shame the glitch in the fabric of the air around the Subway was fixed last week and its patrons are no longer able to leave, because the view from their thirteenth floor would be just _perfect_ for a date.”

 “That sounds like it’d be nice, actually. Perhaps I could take an evening off, for dinner. It’s been a while…”

“Dinner would be so wonderful, Carlos! You just call me whenever, okay?”

“ – Now you mention it, Cecil, there was something I was meaning to tell you when you called me. I mean, something aside from the fact that I wanted to talk to you. I think there might be something wrong with my laboratory.”

“Something wrong?”

“Yes. It’s an effort to remember – ”

“Carlos?”

“ – this sudden sense of overwhelming fear, and – ”

“Carlos?”

“ – the fact that I wanted to talk to you – ”

“Carlos, can you hear me? Carlos?”

“ – sudden sense of overwhelming – ”

“I’m – I’m coming over there, Carlos. Stay where you are.”

[ _static_ ]

“Just stay where you are.”

[ _static continues_ ]

 

\--

 

The radio is quiet for a while.

 

\--

 

Round about a year ago, you climbed up a flight of creaking stairs made of something that looked and reacted almost like metal, to reach the roof of your new laboratory building. You sat down on the edge of that roof, your legs folded, tugging your flannel shirt closer around your shoulders against the faint chill. And you looked across Night Vale, as the sun set slowly over the sand wastes.

You looked at the lanes of the highways, at the ghostly cars hurtling along them and flickering in and out of existence as they drove. You looked at the suburban sprawl of the buildings before you, the neon lights of the late-night restaurants and diners flickering on as the light grew dimmer. You looked at the water towers and pylons rising like spires or obelisks in the distance. You looked at the spires and obelisks rising like water towers or pylons in the distance. You looked at the miniature figures of the citizens of Night Vale – some of them hooded, some of them unhooded, and some of them of ambiguous hood – making their way across town; returning to their homes to pretend to sleep, or leaving their homes to begin the night’s work.

If you had been downstairs, and if you had turned on the ancient radio the previous owner of your building had left on the countertop, you would have heard yourself being talked about – you and your perfect teeth and your perfect hair. But you were not downstairs, and you did not turn on the radio.

What did you think about that evening, looking over the town you had so newly arrived in?

Did you wonder about the secrets it held – the reason behind the halo around Old Woman Josie’s house, the [RETRACTED] of the [RETRACTED], the events that had led to the scorched patch of ground in front of City Hall? Did you question where you could ( _Shop_ ) buy a selection of lightweight ( _At_ ) yet fashionable new shirts ( _Target_ )? Did you consider how the residents of the city had reacted to the meeting you had called earlier that day; how they would react to your upcoming research projects all around the town?

Did you ever think that Night Vale could, perhaps, become not only a workplace and a site of scientific interest – but also, a home?

Did you predict that, just over a year later, the fruit of a malevolent and supernatural orange tree would attach itself unnoticeably to the back of your head using a series of small, fast-growing horns made of what appeared (under later examination) to be human keratin, thereby robbing you of your short-term memory and many of your conversational and linguistic facilities as it leeched energy from your brainstem?

And – most importantly of all – did you know that, also just over a year later, you would have had such a profound impact on the little heart of one humble community radio broadcaster that he would rush to your laboratory to hack the horned, parasitic fruit off you with a big knife, and then (when that strategy failed) offer up one of his own precious interns as a sacrifice to the orange tree, to save your life?

I don’t know the answers to those questions, dearest Carlos. Perhaps you don’t, either. Perhaps they will join those massed ranks of unanswered questions, written in blood on a roll of parchment stored in the basement of the Night Vale Public Library and placed under 24-hour guard.

All I know is that when the Sinister Flora (Non-Fungal) Division of the Sheriff’s Secret Police arrived to take away the satiated orange tree and the withered remains of Intern Gary, I was so, _so_ happy that you were alive and well.

The story about us doesn’t have an ending, although it might have a beginning.

You take my hand and we stand at the window, looking out across Night Vale. Somehow, even now, the radio has not stopped speaking. In the distance, high in the sky above the Arby’s parking lot, the lights –

[ _static continues_ ]

 

**Author's Note:**

> with thanks to [Skippy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/suitablyskippy) for encouraging/enabling me throughout, and for her invaluable Cecil advice, and to [Sam](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sunspeared/pseuds/sunspeared) for looking this over and picking out my rogue Britishisms. goodnight, listeners. goodnight.


End file.
